1. Technical Field
The disclosure relates to a multimedia file sharing method and a system thereof, which applies the virtual file technology to achieve near real time multimedia sharing and transparent receiving.
2. Related Art
With great improvement of computation power of electronic device, and increasing of a network transmission bandwidth, more and more multimedia functions are provided. The quality requirement of the multimedia functions also becomes much higher than before. There are currently many multimedia file formats with a high quality, for example, a video files with more than 720p (1280×720) or 1080p (1920×1080) in resolution, or a picture with more than 10 mega pixels.
However, when being shared through a network, the following two issues are required to be considered: whether a near real time sharing may be achieved, or whether transparent transmitting/receiving by different multimedia players with different multimedia formats may be provided.
Considering whether the near real time sharing may be achieved, it is required that when the multimedia is shared by multiple persons, if one party shares a multimedia content, the other users on line at the same time are enabled to start playing the multimedia content without waiting for a long time.
As for providing the transparent transmitting/receiving by different multimedia players with different multimedia formats, it indicates that the multimedia players are not necessary to modify or add the software modules of the players for different transmissions of multimedia files, to meet the streaming protocols or container.
In the light of the current technologies, the implementation methods are classified into streaming transmission (such as Youtube) and file transmission (such as bt, ftp, or the msn file transmission). However, the technologies cannot solve the aforesaid two aspects at the same time, due to the following problems.
For the multimedia video and audio streaming technology, the sharing solution may merely achieve a follow-up near real time sharing effect instead of a near real time effect. That is to say, a source is required to be processed first in the sharing solution, the multimedia data is transmitted to a server for storage, so that the data streaming are subsequently downloaded from the server when other users are intended to enjoy a film. In addition, the technology cannot effectively solve the problem of transparent transmitting/receiving by different multimedia players with different multimedia formats. The streaming technology is quite complex. Each multimedia format is required to have a container for a different streaming protocol.
Since the file network transmission technology is not directed to multimedia application, the problem of achieving the near real time sharing cannot be solved. That is to say, although exchanging data by using the file transmission method has developed for several decades and has a very wide application, for example, applications such as bt, ftp, msn or email, a user cannot enjoy the content of the multimedia until the transmission of the whole file is ended.
A peer-to-peer file sharing technology is disclosed in related documents. The document discloses a method for sharing a file on a network. The file is stored in a data folder which is named after a group name. The contents of the file are transmitted in a peer-to-peer way. The shared file is temporarily stored in a form of a virtual file in a computer of a shared party. In the peer-to-peer network group file sharing mechanism, the file is directly transmitted to a computer of the shared party without being sliced.
A method for peer-to-peer sharing, transmitting and distributing a multimedia file is disclosed in another related document. The structural diagram thereof is shown in FIG. 1. The document introduces a method for peer-to-peer sharing of media data on a network. A server system manages the shared data and provides functions such as user authentication and content browse of shared data so as to make sure that the contents of the media data are merely transmitted to an authorized user, providing a safe media sharing platform. The disclosed technology needs a server system to control and manage all shared files, and an authorized and authenticated user can obtain the contents of the files. A sharing space is managed by the system, and the shared file entities are stored in computers of the authorized and authenticated users.
However, all the technologies cannot achieve the near real time sharing and cannot provide the transparent transmitting/receiving by different multimedia players with different multimedia formats.